Also in Gardening & Agriculture

Integrated Forest Gardening

The Complete Guide to Polycultures and Plant Guilds in Permaculture Systems

"Integrated Forest Gardening is an evolution from Bill Mollison's original teachings, built upon by countless designs and a straightforward process. Both the seasoned and new designer can use this work to confidently approach a project, weaving land, client, and vision into an abundant and joyful reality."

—Javan K. Bernakevitch, Educator and Agroecology Designer

Permaculture is a movement that is coming into its own, and the concept of creating plant guilds is increasingly at the forefront of every farmer’s and gardener’s permaculture practice.

Authors Wayne Weiseman, Daniel Halsey, and Bryce Ruddock have created the first, and most comprehensive, book about plant guilds, covering in detail both what guilds are and how to design and construct them, complete with extensive color photography and design illustrations. While other permaculture books address this topic of guilds, none provides enough depth to be replicable in a serious way.

Though detailed, Integrated Forest Gardening will benefit readers of any scale, from permaculture designers and professional growers to backyard growers new to the concept of permaculture.

One of the essential practices of permaculture is to develop perennial agricultural systems that thrive over several decades without expensive and harmful inputs. Those systems include perennial-plant guilds, food forests, agroforestry, and mixed animal-and woody-species polycultures.

The guild concept often used is one of a “functional relationship” between plants. In other words, it is the integration of species that creates a balanced, healthy, and thriving ecosystem. But it goes beyond integration. A guild is a metaphor for all walks of life, most importantly, a group of people working together to craft works of balance, beauty, and utility.

Integrated Forest Gardening provides readers with information on:

What we can observe about natural plant guilds in the wild and the importance of observation;

Detailed research on the structure of plant guilds;

Animal interactions with plant guilds;

Steps to guild design, construction, and dynamics, from assessment to design to implementation;

Fifteen detailed plant guilds, five each from the three authors based on their unique perspectives; and,

The massive degradation of conventional agriculture and the global environmental havoc it creates have never been as pervasive, so it has become a necessity to further the under-standing of a comprehensive design and planning system such as permaculture that works with nature, not against it.

About the Authors

Wayne Weiseman

Wayne Weiseman is certified by the Permaculture Institute of Australia and the Worldwide Permaculture Network as an instructor of the Permaculture Design Certificate Course.

He is the director of Kinstone Academy of Applied Permaculture (KAAP) in Fountain City, Wisconsin, the Permaculture Project LLC, and the Permaculture Design-Build Collaborative LLC, full- service, international consulting and educational businesses promoting the ideas of eco-agriculture, renewable energy resources, and eco-construction methods. For many years he managed a land-based, self-reliant community project combining organic crop/food production, ecologically built shelters, renewable energy, and appropriate technologies.

Daniel Halsey

Daniel Halsey is a certified permaculture designer and teacher for the Permaculture Research Institute. Certified by the Permaculture Research Institute, Daniel travels nationally and internationally teaching permaculture and ecological design to permaculture design certification students, homesteaders, and landscape designers.

Daniel and his wife Ginny manage self-sustaining forest gardens of fruiting trees, shrubs and nut crops at SouthWoods Forest Gardens, a permaculture design, demonstration, and educational site located on a twenty-five-acre wetland savannah in Prior Lake, Minnesota.

Bryce Ruddock

Bryce Ruddock is certified as an instructor of permaculture teaching by the Permaculture Institute USA and Cascadia Permaculture Institute since 2010. He authored the Plant Guilds e-book, a training manual used in classes by Midwest Permaculture. His interest in perennial polycultures began in 1980.

Since 1984 Bryce and his partner, Debby, have been implementing permaculture-based polyculture designs at their sixth of an acre urban home site in southeastern Wisconsin, where they have transformed an average suburban yard into a thriving food and medicinal food forest.